“While I am sure that there is very great danger.  You cannot pass from the door to the carriage, without the damp air striking upon your face, and pressing into your lungs.”

“But I must not always exclude myself from the air, mother.  Air and exercise, you know, the doctor says, are indispensable to health.”

“Dry, not damp air.  This makes the difference.  But you must act for yourself, Mary.  You are now a woman, and must freely act in the light of that reason which God has given you.  Because I love you, and desire your welfare, I thus seek to convince you that it is wrong to expose your health to-night.  Your great desire to go blinds you to the real danger, which I can fully see.”

“You are over-anxious, mother,” urged Mary.  “I know how I feel much better than you possibly can, and I know I am well enough to go.”

“I have nothing more to say, my child,” returned the mother.  “I wish you to act freely, but wisely.  Wisely I am sure you will not act if you go to-night.  A temporary illness may not alone be the consequence; your health may receive a shock from which it will never recover.”

“Mother wishes to frighten me,” said Mary to herself, after her mother had left the room.  “But I am not to be so easily frightened.  I am sorry she makes such a serious matter about my going, for I never like to do any thing that is not agreeable to her feelings.  But I must go to this ball.  William is to call for me at eight, and he would be as much disappointed as myself if I were not to go.  As to making more cold, what of that?  I would willingly pay the penalty of a pretty severe cold rather than miss the ball.”

Against all her mother’s earnestly urged objections, Mary went with her lover to the ball.  She came home, at one o’clock, with a sharp pain through her breast, red spots on her cheeks, oppression of the chest, and considerable fever.  On the next morning she was unable to rise from her bed.  When the doctor, who was sent for, came in, he looked grave, and asked if there had been any exposure by which a fresh cold could be taken.

“She was at the ball last night,” replied the mother.

“Not with your approval, madam?” he said quickly, looking with a stern expression into the mother’s face.

“No, doctor.  I urged her not to go; but Mary thought she knew best.  She did not believe there was any danger.”

A strong expression rose to the doctor’s lips, but he repressed it, lest he should needlessly alarm the patient.  On retiring from her chamber, he declared the case to be a very critical one; and so it proved to be.  Mary did not leave her room for some months; and when she did, it was with a constitution so impaired that she could not endure the slightest fatigue, nor bear the least exposure.  Neither change of climate nor medicine availed any thing toward restoring her to health.  In this feeble state she married, about twelve months afterward, the young man who had accompanied her to the ball.  One year from the period at which that happy event took place, she died, leaving to stranger hands a babe that needed all her tenderest care, and a husband almost broken-hearted at his loss.